Reporting and understanding your product or business’s environmental impact is becoming increasingly important. Regulatory pressures, investor expectations, and consumer demand are driving the need for more resilient and low-impact products and services. Conducting a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), calculating a product’s carbon footprint, or performing other environmental analyses can be costly, time-consuming, and require specialized expertise. However, advancements in methods and technology now enable businesses to assess their environmental impact with fewer barriers. This article examines three common approaches to carbon accounting for supply chain and product-level emissions—Spend-Based, Product-Level, and Hybrid Approaches—highlighting their advantages and limitations in measuring Scope 3 emissions.

Why Does a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Matter?

A Life Cycle Assessment is a product-level approach and is becoming an essential tool for performing environmental impact analysis for businesses. LCAs play a critical role in carbon accounting, particularly for measuring Scope 3 emissions—those generated by a company’s supply chain and product life cycle. These emissions often make up the largest share of a company’s carbon footprint, making accurate assessment essential for sustainability reporting and reduction efforts. An LCA measures the impact of a product or service throughout its entire life cycle:

Raw Material Extraction: The process of extracting raw materials including mining, and deforestation.

Manufacturing And Processing: The process of turning raw materials into products.

Transportation: Includes all modes of moving raw materials to processing, finished products to storage, and other distribution to retail stores or residences.

Consumer Use: The impact on the environment when the product is used, often associated with water use and energy use.

End-of-Life: This stage encompasses disposal methods of the product such as landfill, composting, or recycling methods. 

Regulatory pressures at the city, state, and national levels, along with growing investor and consumer focus, are driving increased scrutiny of product environmental impacts. Regulations such as SEC Climate Reporting and provisions under the European Green Deal are being implemented worldwide. Investors prioritize resilient, sustainable companies, while consumers seek products that align with their environmental values. As key climate milestones approach, such as Net Zero by 2050, these requirements will continue to expand. Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) serve as a critical tool, equipping companies with the data needed to meet regulatory obligations and stakeholder expectations at both the product and corporate levels.

Spend-Based Approach

One of the biggest challenges in carbon accounting—especially for Scope 3 emissions—is limited access to supplier-specific data and emissions factors. A spend-based approach, such as an Environmentally Extended Input-Output (EEIO) LCA model, offers a top-down solution that helps overcome these challenges. This method is broader in scope and relies primarily on spending data and corresponding emissions factors for different expenditure categories.

However, while a spend-based approach is simpler and can meet reporting requirements, it introduces potential inaccuracies by assuming a direct correlation between cost and environmental impact—an assumption that is not always valid. Additionally, this method often relies on generalized or industry-wide emissions factors, which may not fully capture the specific impact of a company’s operations.

A spend-based approach is useful for obtaining a high-level estimate of a company’s environmental impact. However, its limitations in accuracy and specificity may make it insufficient for businesses seeking precise data to drive meaningful sustainability improvements.

Benefits: 

  • Fast way to calculate emissions
  • Economic data is more readily available than product level data
  • Easy to integrate carbon footprint calculators with financial management systems

Drawbacks: 

  • Accuracy is lower than a product-level data approach
  • Difficult to identify hotspots in supply chain emissions due to averages across products, regions, and suppliers
  • Activity-level data is required for some reporting standards

Product-Level Data Approach

A product-level data approach is traditionally more expensive, time-consuming, and resource-intensive than a spend-based approach. It requires detailed data on every ingredient and component of a product, along with specific emissions factors for each. As a result, product-level LCAs can quickly become complex, particularly for large companies or businesses with intricate supply chains.

However, the granularity of product-level data enables a more precise environmental impact analysis than a spend-based approach. Companies can pinpoint hotspots and implement targeted sustainability improvements, such as optimizing transportation routes, adopting alternative materials, or reducing packaging waste.

Beyond carbon emissions, product-level LCAs can assess additional environmental factors, including water and land use, energy consumption, and human toxicity. This level of specificity ensures businesses can accurately measure and manage their carbon footprint in alignment with sustainability goals.

Benefits: 

  • More specific and accurate analysis of environmental impact
  • Allows businesses to monitor emissions development
  • Sufficient for emissions reporting requirements

Drawbacks: 

  • Data collection can be challenging
  • High costs may be a barrier for small businesses or large portfolios
  • May take more time to complete than spend-based accounting

Hybrid-Based Approach

A hybrid-based approach is a combination of a spend-based approach and a product-level data approach. This allows businesses to use a spend-based approach for higher-level scope 3 or carbon emissions assessments and a product-level data approach for areas where a greater level of detail and accuracy is required. 

By leveraging spend-based models for general supply chain insights and supplementing them with detailed product-specific data for critical components, companies can achieve a more reliable environmental impact assessment without the full complexity and cost of a product-level LCA. 

This approach is particularly useful for businesses looking to refine their sustainability strategies over time, starting with a high-level estimate and progressively integrating more detailed data as resources and capabilities grow. A hybrid approach enables organizations to meet reporting requirements while also identifying meaningful opportunities for environmental impact reduction in a cost-effective manner.

Benefits:

  • Balanced accuracy and efficiency
  • Flexibility to prioritize high-impact areas
  • Enhances credibility of emissions data without excessive complexity

Drawbacks:

  • Inconsistent accuracy across different categories
  • Can still be resource-intensive for data collection
  • Requires ongoing refinement as data availability improves

Finding the Right Balance: Prioritizing Accuracy and Granularity

Choosing between a spend-based and product-level data approach for Life Cycle Assessment depends on your business’s goals, resources, and reporting needs. If you need a quick, broad estimate with minimal data and lower costs, a spend-based approach can be an effective starting point. However, if accuracy and deeper insights into environmental impact are priorities—especially for targeted sustainability improvements—a product-level approach is the better choice. Many businesses may even find a hybrid approach useful, starting with spend-based analysis and gradually incorporating product-level data for key areas. Ultimately, the most effective approach is the one that aligns with your sustainability goals while providing the level of accuracy and granularity needed to make informed, impactful decisions. If your objective is not just to report but to actively reduce emissions and improve environmental performance, a product-level data approach—or a hybrid model incorporating it—is the superior choice.

Next Steps: Measuring Impact

CarbonBright’s AI-powered LCA software helps organizations accurately measure emissions and meet regulatory standards—at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods. Contact us to get started!